The Public Sphere: Liberal Modernity, Catholicism, Islam (Culture and Religion in International Relations)

This book is a theory-informed, comparative and historical exploration of the notion of the public sphere within Western and Islamic traditions. It situates the emergence of the modern public sphere in a wider historical and theoretical context than usually done in conventional analyses. The work traces cross-cutting genealogies spanning conventional borders between tradition and modernity, and in particular between the Western and the Islamic world. This approach unsettles received, evolutionary views of the public sphere as an exclusive legacy of Western political cultures. The public sphere is finally reconceived as a complex platform for the modern cultivation of culturally diverse, competing, yet intersecting discourses. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 Introduction: The Genealogy of the Public Sphere......Page 12 1 Religion, Civilization, and the Redefinition of Tradition......Page 44 2 Bridging Imagination, Practice, and Discourse......Page 80 3 The Public Reason of the Commoner......Page 110 4 The Collective Pursuit of Public Weal......Page 144 5 The Implosion of Traditions and the Redefinition of Common Sense......Page 184 6 The Modern Public Sphere: Transforming Practical Reason into Prudential Communication......Page 226 Conclusion: After Genealogy—Toward a Pluralist Theory of the Public Sphere......Page 254 Notes......Page 272 References......Page 278 A......Page 294 C......Page 295 E......Page 296 G......Page 297 K......Page 298 M......Page 299 P......Page 300 R......Page 301 S......Page 302 T......Page 303 W......Page 304 "This book is a theory-informed, comparative and historical exploration of the notion of the public sphere within Western and Islamic traditions. It situates the emergence of the modern public sphere in a wider historical and theoretical context than usually done in conventional analyses. The work traces cross-cutting genealogies spanning conventional borders between tradition and modernity, and in particular between the Western and the Islamic world. This approach unsettles received, evolutionary views of the public sphere as an exclusive legacy of Western political cultures. The public sphere is finally reconceived as a complex platform for the modern cultivation of culturally diverse, competing, yet intersecting discourses."--Jacket This book explores conceptual and institutional developments of the notion of the public sphere in the West and in the Islamic world, tackling historic ruptures spanning the formation and transformation of the Euro-Mediterranean world. Set against an imploding grammar of socio-political life, the modern liberal public sphere appears in a new light.